"...the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology. ... The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. ... As yet there is only one country which has succeeded in creating this politician’s paradise.” - Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society, 1960.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

UnderpantsGate: Big Oil, the CIA and the Attempted Bombing of Flight 253 as Justification for Military Operations in Yemen & Nigeria (w/Updates)

HOUSTON - A Houston-area magazine publisher has met and been following members of a suspected terrorist's family for years.

Chido Nwangwu publishes USAfricaOnline.com, one of the most widely-visited internet publications devoted to Nigerian-American relations.

Nwangwu has been following Forouk Abdul Mutalab's family for years before the 23-year-old man left Nigeria for college in the United Kingdom. The suspected terrorist's father, Alhaji Umuru Mutallab, is considered one of the most powerful men in Nigeria ...

Publisher Chido Nwangwu hails from the West Africa Theological Seminary, founded and chiefly directed by Dr. Gary Maxey, an American evangelical missionary who has dual homes in Atlanta, GA and Lagos, Nigeria.

Recall that Dutchman Jasper Schuringa, who apprehended the bomber, the star of the Flight 253 "action movie" - all of it reportedly on tape - is the son of a Shell Oil executive. Shell, Chevron and Nigerian terrorists are warring: "Nigeria, whose population of about 140 million people makes it Africa’s most populous country, is almost evenly split between the mainly Muslim north and a largely Christian south. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, said Dec. 19 it attacked a pipeline in the southern oil region used by Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Chevron Corp." - Bloomberg, Dec. 26, 2009

Patricia "Scotty" Keepman tells 620WTMJ's "Wisconsin's Morning News." that she and her family were seated about 20 rows behind Abdulmutallab in a center aisle, and that she saw a man who videotaped the entire flight. Patricia Keepman went on to say "He sat up and videotaped the entire thing, very calmly. We do know that the FBI is looking for him intensely. Since then, we've heard nothing about it."

There has only been one picture released to the media taken on flight 253 - it’s an exclusive on CNN showing uniformed officers removing the Christmas Day bomber from the plane. ...

[T]he American public won’t be seeing that video anytime soon, if at all, and it seems that the Federal government doesn‘t want to mention it. But what is also even more interesting, is that CNN and other main stream media outlets have yet to follow up with any questions about the man standing with a camcorder filming the bomber on flight 253. ...http://www.examiner.com/x-21777-Las-Vegas-Democrat-Examiner~y2010m1d5-Passenger-films-Northwest-Flight-253-bomb-attempt

"'The War of Terror' is about Protecting the Free Flow of Oil"

"Some, like author and researcher F. William Engdahl, insist that the ‘war on terror' is, and always has been, more about protecting the free flow of oil than stemming the tide of terrorism. "The evidence suggests that the Pentagon and US intelligence are moving to militarize a strategic chokepoint for the world's oil flows ... [using] claims of a new Al Qaeda threat arising from Yemen," writes Engdahl. "In addition, undeveloped petroleum reserves in the territory between Yemen and Saudi Arabia are reportedly among the world's largest."

"Impending US military actions in Yemen - strategically located on an important trading route linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea - are directly linked to US oil interests in Nigeria," wrote Ken Boyte in January at AllVoices.com. He goes on to cite a feasibility study produced by the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1975 that identified Yemen as "a target for invasion."

In addition to U.S. military officers and intelligence officers, "Unified Quest 2008" brought together participants from the State Department and other U.S. government agencies, academics, journalists, and foreign military officers (including military representatives from several NATO countries, Australia, and Israel), along with the private military contractors who helped run the war games: the Rand Corporation and Booz-Allen. ...

One participant, U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Mark Stanovich, drew up a plan that called for the deployment of thousands of U.S. troops within 60 days....

Among scenarios examined during the game were the possibility of direct American military intervention involving some 20,000 U.S. troops in order to "secure the oil," ...

[W]hen General Ward appeared before the House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2008, he cited America's growing dependence on African oil as a priority issue for Africom and went on to proclaim that combating terrorism would be "Africom's number one theater-wide goal." He barely mentioned development, humanitarian aid, peacekeeping or conflict resolution. ...

" ... the serious furore created by Abdulmulltallab’s action will further justify the Obama administration’s commitment to AFRICOM’s escalation of the military role of the command in fighting the alleged global war on terrorism (GWOT). ... "

from: Scapegoats and scaremongersAlan Maass unravels the deceptions and hidden motives in the government and media response to the plot to set off a bomb on a plane bound for Detroit.

... The government of Yemen is notoriously corrupt and brutal. It is one of the few countries in the world with a record of executions to rival the U.S., and one where the CIA rendition program sent detainees to be tortured by an allied regime. Yemeni military forces have been happy to collaborate with U.S. "war on terror" operations, especially when this furthers the government's ongoing campaigns against opposition groups in the north and secessionists in the south.

But Obama says he's "made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government, training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them." ...http://socialistworker.org/2010/01/05/scapegoats-and-scaremongers

THE PATH TO DETROIT

But how on earth were Big Oil and its Saudi partners going to convince the war-weary American public to finance yet another foreign invasion? Pipeline security doesn't wring a driblet of sympathy from the recessionary taxpayer. The answer was too obvious - a covert operation ...

Air America: "Brian Ross of ABC News reports that two of the four men behind the plot to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day were actually prisoners of the United States and that, under the leadership of President George W. Bush, were released into a Saudi art rehabilitation program. ..."http://airamerica.com/politics/12-28-2009/bush-let-christmas-bombing-planners-out-gitmo/

Saudi Arabia's King Abdallah receives the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as both countries become more involved in the deadly war in Yemen.

The meeting between King Abdallah Bin Abd Al-Aziz Al Saud and CIA Director Leon E. Panetta took place in Riyadh on Sunday, the Saudi Press Agency reported. Apparently, King Abdallah also held another meeting on the same day with the Head of Russian Federal Commission of Military and Technical Cooperation Michael Dimitriv.

The report, however, did not include any specific details about the topics that were discussed during the two meetings, simply announcing that there was an exchange of greetings between the king and US President Barack Obama through the CIA director.

The meeting between the Saudi leader and the CIA chief came just days after both the US and Saudi Arabia decided to get more involved in the bloody conflict in northern Yemen ...

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=111411&sectionid=351020205

So Panetta travelled all the way to Riyadh for "an exchange of greetings between the king and US President Barack Obama?" King Abdallah couldn't dial a telephone? Perhaps, for the sake of argument, they talked about something else, something very sensitive ... like how to persuade the American people to support further covert and overt military adventures in Yemen. We had already established a CIA presence there ...

" ... Veteran investigative reporters Susan and Joseph Trento, who first obtained and exposed the flaws in the no-fly list in 2006, have completed a new investigation of the CIA’s role in airline security. It reveals that the CIA is bypassing other government agencies and following terrorists on airplanes without telling TSA or the airlines involved. It shows how terrorists and nuclear proliferators have been allowed to fly because the CIA has refused to add their correct names or aliases to the no-fly list. ... " http://alexconstantine.blogspot.com/2010/01/cia-deliberately-terrorists-names-and.html

" ... the CIA failed to circulate a report it had about bombing suspect ... "http://www.examiner.com/x-22397-Providence-Business-News-Examiner~y2009m12d29-Breaking-Flight-253-Terror-Plot-CIA-failed-to-circulate-report-about-bombing-suspect

" ... Yesterday it was claimed MI5 knew three years ago of his "multiple communications" with extremists in Britain while at University College London. ...http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/01/04/jet-bomber-s-visa-con-115875-21940595/

" ... Abdulmutallib was also on a terror watch list, although that fact, and the fact that he had been known to anti-terror officials for several years, did not prevent him from boarding Flight 253 ... "http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/28/flight-253-and-counterterror%E2%80%99s-epic-fail-by-robert-spencer/

" ... The CIA said it worked with embassy officials to make sure that Abdulmutallab's name made it into the government's database of suspected terrorists and noted his potential extremist connections in Yemen. The CIA also said it forwarded that information to the National Counterterrorism Center. ... it is unlikely Abdulmutallab would have been flagged because the Customs and Border Patrol officers do not routinely screen all passengers against the names of individuals on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, known as TIDE, which was the only place that Abdulmutallab was listed. ... "http://www.sphere.com/nation

"Israeli Intelligence" Ties to AQ Extremists in Yemen?

The BBC reports that Al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen -led by the commandos released by Bush - are really Israeli agents though they have organized attacks against US targets:

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said the security forces have arrested a group of alleged Islamist militants linked to Israeli intelligence. Mr Saleh did not say what evidence had been found to show the group's links with Israel, a regional enemy of Yemen. The arrests were connected with an attack on the US embassy in Sanaa last month which killed at least 18 people, official sources were quoted saying.

"A terrorist cell was arrested and will be referred to the judicial authorities for its links with the Israeli intelligence services," Mr Saleh told a gathering at al-Mukalla University in Hadramawt province. "Details of the trial will be announced later. You will hear about what goes on in the proceedings," he added.

The 17 September attack was the second to target the US embassy since April. Militants detonated car bombs before firing rockets at the heavily fortified building.

Mr Saleh did not identify the suspects, but official sources were quoted saying it was same cell - led by a militant called Abu al-Ghaith al-Yamani - whose arrest was announced a week after the attack.http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9951

Passenger's account of Flight 253 suspect disputedFlier says man who tried to get on flight may be from SudanPaul Egan | The Detroit NewsJanuary 05. 2010

" .... A passenger on the Christmas Day flight that was targeted in a terrorist attack says the man a fellow passenger saw attempting to board the flight without a passport may have been a Sudanese refugee, not the accused bomber. BEAU TAYLOR of Jackson, an international development consultant who was aboard the flight from Amsterdam, said he saw a young man being accompanied on the airplane by a flight attendant. ... "

Beau Taylor & USAID, an agency on intimate terms with the CIA ... and, some say, Hizb-ut-Tahrir terrorists: "International Development, USAID contracting, Managerial and Strategy Consulting, Negotiations, Hiring, Recruiting, Management, Russian Language, International Relationship Development, Cross-Cultural Management, Marketing, Finance, USAID." Mr. Taylor is "currently charged with operational oversight of a $20,000,000 project to stabilize communities in Baquba, Iraq. This is part of the larger CSP project, a $300,000,000 development project to support USAID efforts in Iraq."http://www.linkedin.com/pub/beau-taylor/1/3b4/799\

"Federal officials for several days denied accounts by Haskell and his wife, Lori, also an attorney, that they had seen a second man from their flight led away in handcuffs at Detroit Metro after a dog reacted to something inside the man's bag.

"But late Friday, Ron Smith, the chief U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer for Detroit, confirmed that the incident did happen and apologized for not correcting the information earlier. He said the man from Flight 253, who was handcuffed, later was released without charges. ... "http://www.detnews.com/article/20100105/METRO/1050370/1409/METRO/Passenger-s-account-of-Flight-253-suspect-disputed

"On Sunday, the neocon Joe Lieberman said the U.S. needs to bomb Yemen and pronto. A script on Yemen and al-Qaeda is now being uniformly followed by the corporate media ... "http://www.infowars.com/man-videotaped-underwear-bomber-on-flight-253/

The Flaming Diarhhea Psyop

Abdulmutallab had been given erroneous directions for detonating the bomb, and it's fairly certain that the intention was to scare, not kill - after all, there were "actors" planted on the plane. AP reports: " ... The Dutch government said the plan to blow up the Detroit-bound aircraft was professional but called its execution 'amateurish.' ... [Interior Minister Guusje] Ter Horst said Abdulmutallab apparently assembled the explosive device, including 80 grams of PETN, in the aircraft toilet, then planned to detonate it with a syringe of chemicals. She said the explosives appeared to have been professionally prepared and had been given to Abdulmutallab, but did not elaborate.

"If you want to detonate it, you have to do that another way than he did. That is why we talk about amateurism," she said."

Everything was "professional" about the PETN bomb ... but the bomber had no idea how to ignite it. This only adds up if he was a psyop patsy.

"Authorities said the passenger was a 36-year old Nigerian petroleum engineer who became unhappy when he was ordered to his seat one hour before landing, as required under new in-flight rules following the attempted Christmas day bombing of the same flight by another Nigerian citizen. The passenger supervises 90 employees at the multinational petroleum company he works for in Yemen. ... "

Netherlands—Dutchman Jasper Schuringa who reportedly prevented the terror suspect from blowing up the Northwest Airline jet with 289 passengers on board, is being cheered in the Netherlands as a new national hero. The 32-year-old film director’s act of bravery has made the down-to-earth Dutch proud as peacocks.

“We are extremely proud of him but also really shocked because in one second it could have ended up very differently,” Jasper’s parents were reported as saying by Dutch media.

Headlines in the Netherlands largest newspaper 'De Telegraaf', read "Dutch Jasper Overmasters Terrorist” and “Decoration for Hero Jasper Schuringa.” Other news articles in the Netherlands also focus on how “Dutch Jasper” is praised in American media.

Dutch Minister Wouter Bos spoke with Jasper over the phone and expressed his appreciation on behalf of the Dutch government.

Jasper himself seems rather sober about his part: “I just jumped. I didn’t think. I went over there and tried to save the plane,” he said in an interview with CNN.

Jasper was born in Curacao, a former Dutch colony in the Caribbean though his family often moved, globetrotting for his father’s job with the Shell Oil firm. ...

Besides Curacao, Jasper and his family lived in Oman, the Netherlands and Gabon, where they had to flee with help of the French foreign legion when the civil war broke out there. After secondary school he graduated from a film academy in Miami. Currently, he runs a video company called “Go With The Flow Productions." ...

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/27065/

Abdulmutallab SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED his Seat

" ... Jasper, a video director and producer was sitting across the aisle from the bomber and when he heard a pop as did all the other passengers; he went into action seeing the smoke and fire. ... [R]eports are now suggesting that Abdulmutallab had requested his particular seat, there needs to be an evaluation of such request. ... "

" ... The Curacao-born Jasper Schuringa attended film school in Miami and he also lived in Oman. After accusations in the media that he was publicizing himself over the Muttalab incident, Schuringa largely receded from public view. Schuringa was en route to Costa Rica via Detroit to visit his sister. The National Counter-terrorism office in The Hague is being mum about any connections it had with Schuringa, according to the Dutch paper Parool.

Jasper Schuringa probably didn't think twice before dismantling Northwest Airlines Flight 253's would-be bomber. But before telling his story, he wanted money, and he got it. ... Yesterday Mediaite and TV Newser reported on Schurnga's two wares he's got for sale: the first, a blurry picture of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The second is himself, for interviews. CNN got to him first. They also got an interview. ...

All the media organizations found Schuringa's company website, which had his cell phone number on it. By the time he finally got to Miami, his final destination, CNN and The New York Post had gotten to him.

Once the Post and CNN got through to Jasper, he handed over all negotiations to his friend who lives in Miami who he came to the U.S. to visit. His name is Shai Ben-Ami. He's an Israeli guy who's in the restaurant business, as a Google search would turn up. ...

Schurnga sold the "TV Rights" of the first of his two photos to CNN for $10K.

The "print rights" went to the Post for $5K.

Later, Schuringa was paid upwards of $3K by ABC News for a second photo, which Schuringa tried to sell to other local news outlets for $5K, unsuccessfully. ...

"He was quite upfront about it," we're told. "He made it clear that Jasper was only talking to news organizations that paid."

During the Detroit terror cell case, she represented Karim Koubriti, an Islamic terrorist in a cell, which plotted to blow up the U.S. Air Force Base in Turkey, where U.S. AWACS and Israeli F-16s are based and from where they took off. They also plotted to blow up hotels and casinos in Las Vegas and planned to detonate in Disneyland.

During the course of her “representation” of terrorist Koubriti, Siefer and her fellow public defender, Richard Helfrick a/k/a Rick Helfrick (who will probably also assist her in representing Abdulmutallab), stole the stationery of the then-Chief Judge of the Federal Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Lawrence Zatkoff, forged Zatkoff’s name, and sent it to another attorney in the case, accusing him of faking invoices (which wasn’t true). That makes at least several federal crimes that I can think of–theft, forgery, impersonating a federal official, mail fraud, etc. but they got away with it. ... http://www.debbieschlussel.com/14360/abdulmutallabs-public-defender-is-dirty-trickster-who-forged-documents/

Mutallab's Blue-Chip Father

The Nigerian Bomber's Father & Big Oil: SaharaReporters - " ... Dr. Muttallab, who is currently the chairman of First Islamic bank, JBI, in Nigeria, sits on the board of that bank with Dr. Rilwan Lukman, the Minister of Petroleum resources. ... "

----------The terror suspect who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound plane is the son of a Nigerian banker who alerted U.S. authorities to his "extreme religious views" months ago, it was reported Saturday.

The father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, a former minister and chairman of First Bank in Nigeria, is shocked that his son was even was allowed to fly to the U.S., family members told the Nigerian newspaper This Day.

The dad was meeting with security officials to discuss his son, identified as Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, 23. The younger Mutallab was not on any no-fly list when he flew from Nigeria to Detroit through Amsterdam, Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.) told the Daily News. ...

... The older Mutallab, a conservative Muslim, was born in 1939 in the north central state of Katsina (home of the current, ailing President Umaru Ya'Adua). A USAfricaonline.com count found that Umaru Mutallab was chairman of more than 36 blue chip companies inside Nigeria and overseas. ...

A highly respected conservative man whose friends cut across states, religion and gender, Mutallab is soft spoken and very intelligent and industrious.

Having reported and followed key aspects of Umaru Mutallab and Nigeria's military and civilian elite, I know that the older Mutallab benefited from his deft positioning across an immense network of family, geo-ethnic and professional layers of interests.

Consequently, the man has had a near permanent presence on Nigeria's economic landscape as a government official, banking investor, facilitator or shareholder - working the levers of power- all through civilian and military governments in Nigeria for more than 35 years.

Alhaji Mutallab is one of Nigeria's most respected technocrats and administrators, having also served as a Federal Minister of Economic Development & Reconstruction. He is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered and Certified Accountants (FCCA), Institute of the International Bankers Association (FIBA, USA), the Institute of Bankers and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (FCA).

Mutallab was appointed director of First Bank on March 8, 1996 and became chairman of the Board on March 18, 1999. In mid December, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab - after his massively rewarding decade at the helm of the First Bank Plc - fully retired as Chairman. He was succeeded by Oba Otudeko, a billionaire chairman of the Honeywell Group of Companies and immediate past President of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).

Mutallab has been in strategic board positions of the banking sector for decades as CEO and/or Chairman of various financial institutions including United Bank for Africa (UBA).

“The man is amiable and always at the forefront of any economic revival committees and boards of government, the alleged link of his son to the alleged terrorism plot left many of his friends and associates devastated,” notes Obinwa Nnaji, USAfricaonline.com bureau chief in Lagos. “Other Nigerians still argue at their homes, various places and across USAfrica multimedia blogs that they still do not believe it to be a stock in trade of Nigerians to be found planting bombs in aircraft.” ...

[O]ne of the areas where the older Mutallab's skills and services did not yield much if any significant value for Nigerians was his tenure as chairman of the troubled and woeful former National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).

By January 2010, about four weeks from now, Nigerians will start feeling the impacts of the Vision 20:2020, the Chairman of the Business Support Group of the Vision, Alhaji Umuru Mutallab, CON, said in this interview.

Vision 20:2020 sought to accelerate the pace of the country’s growth & development and make it among the world’s twentieth economies by the year 2020. Mutallab said for the Vision to succeed, the civil service must be carried along. He spoke on many other issues.

It started during the tenure of former President Olusegun Obasanjo following the projections of Goldman Sachs which realises that countries like Brazil, Rusia, India and China have achieved phenomenal growth and said further that there are other sets of countries which if they put their acts together by the year 2025 would be among the top 20 economy of the world. Nigeria was among these countries ...

Mr Schuringa said he said he frisked the suspect and discovered his trousers were open and that he had a flaming object resembling a small, white shampoo bottle strapped to his left leg near his crotch.

"I pulled the object from him and tried to extinguish the fire with my hands and threw it away," he told CNN. ...

All the while, Mr Abdulmatallab seemed dazed, he said. "He was staring into nothing." When he got him into first class, Mr Schuringa pulled off his remaining clothes to check for further explosives and helped a crew member to handcuff him.

Britain sends counter-terrorist forces to YemenTelegraph.co.uk - ‎Jan 2, 2010‎Britain has dispatched a special counter-terrorist unit to Yemen as the mountainous Arab state emerges as the new frontline in the war against al-Qaeda, ...

Crack SAS team to hunt the terroristsMirror.co.uk - Rupert Hamer - ‎Jan 2, 2010‎A crack squad of SAS troopers has been flown to the Yemen to wipe out new al-Qaeda terror camps. The move follows revelations that ...---Operation Underpants: A "Planned Event"

" ... The story seemed almost plausible, but the sequence of US government responses and controlled news releases about the alleged bomber over the 24-48 hours that followed proved otherwise. Just like in the cases of 9/11 and 2005 London bombings, the campaign of disinformation shows that ‘Terror in Detroit’ is another ‘planned event.’ ... " - From: "Christmas Terror in Detroit! Deception continues," by Ajit Randeniya

>" ... As we have seen with Mohamed Atta, Richard Reid and Mohammad Sidique Khan, Abdulmutallab's "journey" was one undertaken by many before, often with a wink-and-a-nod by British and American security officials when it served the geostrategic ambitions of their political masters. As security researcher and analyst Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed wrote in New Internationalist in October: 'Islamist terrorism cannot be understood without acknowledging the extent to which its networks are being used by Western military intelligence services, both to control strategic energy resources and to counter their geopolitical rivals. Even now, nearly a decade after 9/11, covert sponsorship of al-Qaeda networks continues.' ... " - From: "Weird Underpants, Strange Backstory: The Untold Tale of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's Christmas Flight," by Tom Burghardt

... Both then and now, the government and the media expect the public to accept that all that was involved was mistakes. But why should anyone assume that the failure to act on the extensive intelligence leading to Abdulmutallab involved merely “innocent” mistakes—and not something far more sinister?

If this episode is to be examined seriously, the question must be asked: What would have happened had Northwest Flight 253 been destroyed?

There is no question but that such a catastrophe would have had immense repercussions both internationally and within the United States. It would have seriously destabilized the Obama administration, politically strengthened the most extreme right-wing sections of the ruling class, and cleared the way for an even more massive expansion of military-intelligence operations overseas and a drastic curtailing of democratic rights at home. ...

When nothing adds up, its time we start looking at what we kow. Our recent terrorist, now dubbed "the crotch bomber" is another dupe. He could have been working for anyone, drugged, brainwashed or simply influenced, maybe by crazy Arabs, maybe by the Mossad, maybe by the CIA. We only know the game is falling apart.

We do know a couple of things. Dad, back in Nigeria, ran the national arms industry (DICON) in partnership with Israel, in particular, the Mossad. He was in daily contact with them. They run everything in Nigeria, from arms production to counter-terrorism. Though Islamic, Muttalab was a close associate of Israel. He has been misrepresented. His "banking" is a cover. Next, what do we know about the two alleged Al Qaeda leaders Bush had released, the ones who allegedly planned this?

According to ABC news, the Al Qaeda leaders running the insurgency in Yemen were released from Guantanamo, although two of the alleged highest ranking known terrorist there, without trial.

Guantanamo prisoner #333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner #372, Said Ali Shari, were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody.

Both of the former Guantanamo detainees are described as military commanders and appear on a January, 2009 video along with the man described as the top leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, Abu Basir Naser al-Wahishi, formerly Osama bin Laden's personal secretary.

With all the hoopla about trials in New York, not a word is said when top level terrorists are released to Saudi friends of the Bush family who let them go. We are now fighting these two Bush friends in Yemen. They are running a major insurgency there. We have been using Cruise missiles and our jets to attack their bases in the last weeks.

"John Gibson and Ace read this as Olby’s way of hinting that dark elements within U.S. intelligence tried to hurt Obama politically by intentionally letting an attack happen. ... Either way, do note that the strong-form conspiracy theory about shadowy forces using Flight 253 to ruin Obama is indeed being circulated ... "

http://www.glocktalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1166984

Searching fot the "Hidden Agenda"

" ' ... It seems that the president is leaning very much towards thinking this was a systemic failure by individuals who maybe had an alternative agenda.' (emphasis added)

'I will accept that intelligence by its nature is imperfect" the President said, "but it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged.'

The question is why? And more pertinently from a parapolitical perspective, what 'alternative agenda' is playing out here that would put the lives of nearly 300 air passengers at risk? ... "

" ... 'The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection,' said a an official quoted by the Times.' ... [The]database had picked up the State Department concern about this guy, that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen ... They could have made a decision on whether to stop him from getting on the plane,' he said. ... "

CBS News has learned that as early as August of 2009 the Central Intelligence Agency was picking up information on a person of interest dubbed "The Nigerian," suspected of meeting with "terrorist elements" in Yemen.

Sources tell CBS News "The Nigerian" has now turned out to be Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. But that connection was not made when Abudulmutallab's father went to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria three months later, on November 19, 2009. It was then he expressed deep concerns to a CIA officer about his son's ties to extremists in Yemen, a hotbed of al Qaeda activity. ...http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16769

" ... The facts emerging are that Mutallab was not traveling on a Nigerian passport but on an Italian passport. Mutallab’s father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, happens to hold the Italian Order of Merit. In addition, Mutallab’s ticket was purchased in Accra, Ghana, with $2,831 in cash and was later re-issued, on December 16, with a different itinerary at the KLM office in Lagos. ... Previously, WMR reported that the security company that cleared Mutallab in Schiphol is ICTS, a firm that is headquartered in Israel and Amstelveen, Netherlands. The firm also cleared attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid for a Miami-bound American Airlines flight from Paris in December 2001. ... "

---ORWELL FLEW IN ON FLIGHT 253

OMNESCIENCE NOW!

... In 2002, retired Adm. John Poindexter, an expert on information technology, devised a plan for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency called the Total Information Awareness program.

PART OF THAT program was designed to foil "asymmetrical warfare" — airline suicide bombers, for example — with vast data-mining computers that could link widely disparate pieces of information in scattered databases. Unfortunately, Poindexter was probably not the best salesman for the program with congressional Democrats.

War On Terror: The U.S. now holds a prisoner of war who has knowledge that could foil future terrorist operations. The Obama administration has a moral obligation to extract it from Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. ...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=516683

THE LYING LIARS OF THE GOP

Obama's Use Of 'Terror': Reporters Still Struggling To Use Internet To Verify ClaimsBy Jason Linkins Huffpost | 01-4-10

One of the last things I did in 2009 was to lament the awesome stupidity of a press corps that seemed unable to do even basic fact-checking, such as using available resources to test contentions like: "Did President Barack Obama stop using the word 'terror' or 'terrorism'?" Peter King told this lie, successfully, to CNN because apparently no one at CNN has access to a computer or a television or even has a teensy bit of electrical current running through the wet membranes found in their cranial cavity.

I was able to use this thing called Google to demonstrate that King was not telling the truth when he said, "Even when the president gave his speech at West Point about the troops going to Afghanistan, he didn't use the word 'terrorism'." It's no big deal. I didn't think I deserved a medal for journalistic excellence, at the time. But I'm starting to revise that belief now that it's 2010 and Greg Sargent has a piece up at the Plum Line documenting how Jim DeMint played all sorts of journalists for fools in a similar fashion over the weekend:

CNN let Senator Jim DeMint come on the network yesterday and claim, without any fact-checking, that Obama doesn't use the word "terror," which DeMint cited as proof of the President's lackluster approach to keeping us safe:

DEMINT: There's no question that the president has down-played the risk of terror since he took office. He is investigating the CIA, rather than build them up.

GLORIA BORGER: How has he -- Senator DeMint, how -- how has he down-played the risk of terror?

Good morning. Yesterday I updated the American people on the immediate steps we took -- the increased screening and security of air travel -- to keep our country safe in the wake of the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day. And I announced two reviews -- a review of our terrorist watch list system and a review of our air travel screening, so we can find out what went wrong, fix it and prevent future attacks. ...

You can also see that Obama used some form of the word "terrorism" three additional times.

Ex-CIA official to lead inquiry into plane incidentBy Joby WarrickWashington Post | January 9, 2010

The Obama administration's top intelligence official has appointed a retired CIA analyst to head an internal investigation of the failures that led to the Dec. 25 attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner.

John E. McLaughlin, a former deputy CIA director, will lead a review of missteps by U.S. intelligence agencies and assess proposals for correcting weaknesses in a system that did not respond to warnings about terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, said Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair.

Blair said the review will also examine the events leading to the Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood, Tex. The assessments will produce "candid, constructive guidance to improve our future performance," he said.

McLaughlin, 67, was named deputy CIA director under George J. Tenet in 2000. McLaughlin briefly served as acting director of the spy agency after Tenet stepped down in 2004. McLaughlin retired later that year.

" ... With this appointment, President Barack Obama has assured that the culture of intelligence cover-up will continue. ... "

President Obama, the CIA and the Master of the Cover-Up11 December 2010

by: Melvin A. Goodman

The Obama administration quietly announced Friday the appointment of John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, to head the internal investigation of the intelligence failures that led to the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a Delta airliner headed for Detroit as well as the events leading to the shootings at Fort Hood in November.

With this appointment, President Barack Obama has assured that the culture of intelligence cover-up will continue. McLaughlin has participated in and sought to cover-up many of the CIA's most egregious failures and misdeeds of the past decade. When he left the CIA, he then served as the agency's chief apologist.

So, who is John McLaughlin? Most of official Washington and the mainstream media view McLaughlin as the mild-mannered, professorial CIA bureaucrat, who former CIA director George Tenet called the "smartest man he had ever met."

Few people understand, however, that McLaughlin played the most important role in making sure that the Bush administration received the intelligence that would be used and misused to justify the use of force against Iraq in 2003.

Washington insiders remember that it was CIA director Tenet who told President George W. Bush, "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk," in response to the president's demand for stronger intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to provide to the American people. Few people remember that it was McLaughlin who actually delivered the "slam-dunk" briefing to the president in January 2003.

McLaughlin was the "villain" behind the politicized intelligence on Iraq in the run-up to the war. He perverted the intelligence process, ignored high-level briefings on the weakness of the intelligence on WMD and tried to silence David Kay, the chief of the Iraq Survey Group, when the weapons inspectors found no evidence of strategic weapons in Iraq.

When Kay returned to CIA headquarters from Baghdad, Tenet and McLaughlin made sure that Kay was given a tiny, windowless office at the end of a distant, deserted corridor undergoing construction. It had no secure phone or classified computer. Kay called it Siberia.

McLaughlin was also the villain behind the CIA's preparation of Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003 that used phony intelligence to convince an international audience of the need for war. According to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Powell's chief of staff, Tenet and McLaughlin lied to the secretary of state about the sourcing of serious allegations dealing with Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain strategic weapons.

The most serious allegation came from an Iraqi con man known as "Curveball," who maintained that Iraq had mobile biological laboratories, a key charge in the phony intelligence to justify the Iraq war. German intelligence debriefed Curveball, and German intelligence officials warned the CIA that Curveball was unstable and that there was no validation for his claims. Tyler Drumheller, the chief of CIA's European Division, knew that Curveball was mentally unstable and a liar, and he urged McLaughlin to drop all references to the mobile biological labs from Powell's speech. McLaughlin ignored him, too.

Five weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Powell and McLaughlin shared a table at the White House correspondents' dinner, where McLaughlin, an amateur magician, agreed to perform a few magic tricks during a break in the action. The CIA deputy director conjured coins out of thin air and transformed a single dollar into a $100 bill; everyone at the table laughed except for Powell, who seemed tense and out of sorts.

According to Bob Drogin, who wrote an authoritative book on Curveball, Powell stared at McLaughlin and requested another trick. "Let's see you find the WMD in Iraq," an unsmiling Powell demanded. McLaughlin looked surprised and his broad grin faded. "We will," he replied, "they're there and we'll find them."

In addition to being one of the ideological drivers for the CIA's policies of torture and abuse, secret prisons and extraordinary renditions, McLaughlin demonstrated early in his career that he was a company man willing to do what was necessary to advance his career. In the 1980s, when CIA Director William Casey and his Deputy Robert Gates were "cooking the books" on intelligence dealing with the Soviet Union, Central America and Southwest Asia, McLaughlin offered no dissent.

When the CIA did an internal investigation of one of the worst examples of politicization of intelligence, the case for Soviet complicity in the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981, McLaughlin made sure there were no references to politicization in the final report and made every effort to hide Gates' role in preparing the Papal plot intelligence assessment. When Gates' nomination as CIA director was in trouble during the confirmation process in 1991, it was McLaughlin who stepped forward to defend his former boss from charges of politicization. ...

Hamilton is another veteran cover-up operative, who honed his skills in the Iran contra investigation, as I reported in 2004:

Full exposure of Iran-contra was hindered by a cover-up culture in Congress. George H.W. Bush was snared in the investigative net, so he enlisted the aid of a trusted ally in the House, Rep. Dick Cheney of Wyoming. Cheney was the ranking Republican in the Iran-contra probe. Robert Parry reports that Cheney "smartly exploited his relationship with Rep. Lee Hamilton," who "gave Bush a pass." The narrow, penlight focus of the investigation was the work of Cheney and Hamilton, who steered it away from "sensitive areas, such as contra-drug trafficking and the public diplomacy operation." (Iran-contra's Otto Reich was tarred by the Orwellian "public diplomacy" scandal under Reagan. A Cuban exile with a sordid history of romancing repressive Latin American regimes, he followed Armitage to the State Department, was appointed to the office of Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs in January 2002, under Powell.)

"Despite surrendering to Cheney's demands time and again, Hamilton failed, in the end, to get a single House Republican to sign the final report. Only three moderate Republicans on the Senate side - Warren Rudman, William Cohen and Paul Trible - agreed to sign the report, after extracting more concessions." Cheney and a few fellow Republicans filed "a minority report with the Committee that denied any significant wrongdoing had occurred."

In 1994, I posted an article on Iran contra connections to 9/11 that detailed some little-known facts about Kean:

Not mentioned on Kean's official Commission biography was his role as director of Amerada Hess Corporation, which in 1998 formed joint venture Delta-Hess, with Delta Oil, in part owned by accused terrorist financier Khalid bin Mahfouz. Mahfouz inherited a controlling interest in the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, the country's largest bank, and was a director with 20% interest in BCCI, the now defunct financial conglomerate involved in money laundering, bribery, support of terrorism, arms trafficking and other crimes. Mahfouz paid $225 million to escape prosecution for his role in the BCCI scandal. Mahfouz also inherited the assets of the Saudi bin Laden group when Salem bin Laden died in a 1988 plane crash. These included an interest in Arbusto Energy, a Houston, Texas oil company founded by George W. Bush. Bin Mahfouz's interests were managed in part by James R. Bath, a close friend of Bush, who served in the Texas ANG with him. Bath's name was inexplicably redacted in Bush's Air National Guard military medical reports.http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/K/Khalid-bin-Mahfuz.htm

A previously unreported intelligence "lapse" surfaced in a hearing conducted by the US Senate Homeland Security Committee on January 20:

... In another bizarre lapse, the US State Department only declared Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the organization that allegedly sent Abdulmutallab onto Flight 253, to be a terrorist group on Tuesday. This is despite the fact that AQAP has operated for over a year, and was held responsible for terrorist attacks on South Korean tourists in Yemen in March 2009, high-ranking Saudi Prince Muhammad bin Nayif in August, and Flight 253 last month. One might also expect that the name of the organization itself would raise suspicions among anti-terrorism officials.

The implication of this announcement, however, was that until January 19, 2010, US officials were not legally required to “implement an asset freeze, travel ban, and arms embargo” against AQAP. This only raises more questions as to what connections US agencies might have had with the attackers.

The senators avoided dealing with these issues in Wednesday’s hearings, devoting much of their time instead to demanding further restrictions on democratic rights. ...

ROMULUS, Mich. - The pilots of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 took the aircraft to a gate at Detroit Metropolitan Airport without knowing about possible risks after an explosive was extinguished inside the cabin on Christmas, a newspaper reported Friday.

Passengers were allowed to get off the plane and luggage was unloaded before the aircraft was moved to an isolated spot and searched, the Detroit Free Press said, citing records from airport police and fire agencies. ... The plane remained at a terminal gate for about two hours before it was moved to search for a bag that belonged to Abdulmutallab, the Free Press reported.

Taking the plane to the terminal was a "violation of common sense," said Richard Bloom, director of terrorism, intelligence and security at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz. "It's a violation of common standard operating procedure. It's a violation of common security rules, regulations and directives," Bloom told the newspaper.

Asked about the decision to park at the terminal, Delta spokeswoman Susan Elliott said the airline, which acquired Northwest, relies on the "professional assessment" of law enforcers to "determine the appropriate course of action." ...

Glen Winn, former head of security at United Airlines, said there is no national standard for handling a suspected bomb on a plane.

"The normal procedure historically is you just don't take it to a terminal," he said.